


hold my hand (we’re falling right now)

by shadowkissed



Series: a forever of roses. [1]
Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Fluff, Growing Up Together, Kids!!!, M/M, Minor Bullying, Puppy Love, beomkai are kids, for most parts, indulgent writing, lapselock, this is just a bunch of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25896247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkissed/pseuds/shadowkissed
Summary: falling in love with hueningkai didn’t come with fireworks in the background or butterflies in his stomach. it had a similar sensation of learning how you breathe – inhale, oxygen in the lungs, exhale. fireworks come and go, but breathing is something your body has accustomed to do even before you figured out the science behind it.that’s the way beomgyu loved kaiit felt like breathing.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Huening Kai
Series: a forever of roses. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2090202
Comments: 20
Kudos: 91





	hold my hand (we’re falling right now)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apricty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricty/gifts).



their first meeting was marked by sand coated hands and snotty tears.

a one sided argument between three taller boys and a quiet boy shrinking behind the pole of a monkey bar preluded the encounter. surprisingly enough, the tears came from beomgyu and not the said boy. he had run unprompted from where he was playing with his friends. his fists holding a handful of sand, which he threw at the face of those friends. 

they recoiled, one of them cried out when the sand got in his eyes, while the rest stared at him like he was crazy. he only threw another handful of sand from his other hand. this caused them to run away, probably figured out that this little thing they’re doing for fun wasn’t worth it. 

his friends called him _cool!_ and _strong!_ for chasing away the older boys and that made him beam proudly. the matter was soon forgotten since the quiet kid wasn’t around anymore and the sun had started to set, so the kids in the neighbourhood had to leave home. 

only when he was left alone that beomgyu broke into tears.

he was a gentle hearted and sensitive boy, as his mom always told him. but he was seven years old, and big boys were not supposed to cry. especially not like this, with his hands angrily brushing his tears away from his face and smearing leftover sand all over his little face. 

the sound of light footsteps making a run towards him tore his attention away from his inner turmoil. when he looked up from where he was sitting at the edge of the sandbox, the quiet kid was standing over him, clutching onto a bunny plushie in an arm. the sun was casting a bright orange ray behind the boy. but even as he couldn’t see clearly through the light and his blurry sight, he recognized the look on the little boy’s face as a displeased one. brows knitted together and lips pressed into a thin line before they parted to speak.

“why?” his tone made it sound more like a demand than a question.

it made beomgyu frown. it wasn’t like he’s expecting any reward for driving away these boys who had been bothering the kid for the past few days. they had been asking questions that were left unanswered by the kid who kept playing on his own. other kids usually walked away upon facing rejection from this arrogant kid, but not those boys. 

now he started to regret his impulsiveness. 

“i thought they were bothering you,” he sniffled for the last time. his tears dried away as his emotion shifted into annoyance. “i’m sorry.”

“no!” the kid interjected, his frown deepened. “why are you crying?”

beomgyu gaped at the question, not expecting it. the other boy still stared at him demandingly, impatient for his answer. but before his brain could come up with an answer, the connection between them was broken by a call that made the boy whipped his head towards the source of voice.

“kai! let’s go home!” a woman called out from the entrance of the playground. 

the boy called kai spared him another look before he ran off to his mother. that was when beomgyu realized that it had gotten dark. but it’s okay because his house was just across the playground, and he was always the last one who left.

as he crossed the small distance of the path leading to his home, he cleaned off his face with his shirt while pondering about the question again. but he only figured out the answer later on when he was comfortably tucked into the bed and his head started replaying the events happened in his busy day. the whole thing with the quiet kid who trusted him enough to speak after ignoring everyone else who tried to play with him. the kid who never broke down into tears when the older boys came to bother him countless of times.

his eyelids dropped as sleep took over, and his mom smiled fondly when he mumbled _‘it’s cause you didn’t cry’_ in his half-asleep daze.

the next day, beomgyu was the last one to head home again. 

but this time, his steps were halted when he saw a familiar bunny plushie sitting on the sandbox. when he picked it up, a small card dropped from it. scrawled over it in a horrible handwriting, a _‘thank you’_ that made him smile in his sleep that night. 

==

(his mom never questioned the origin of the bunny plushie. it was self-explanatory the moment she saw beomgyu bringing a new kid home. huening kai. every time she saw kai, there’s a different plushie clutched in his arm, at least up to the age where he was suddenly not carrying any more plushie. 

she knew that his youngest son was always social and full with energy when he was playing with his classmates, but with kai, she saw a different kind of beomgyu. one that she didn’t even see present in the relationship between her two sons. 

siblings cared for each other in a way that made them fight and make up within five minutes. but beomgyu cared for this younger boy in a way that taught him how to let go of his childhood selfishness. the kind that made him give away his last churros or the last piece of chocolate from its bar (the brand that caused numerous fights between the siblings because none of them would forfeit). the kind that made him crawl on the ground just so kai could step on his back and reach for the top of the monkey bar. 

later on, she would also witness how this friendship taught his son a painful way to let go of his first love.)

==

their friendships centered around the playground, even as they grew up steadily and passed the age appropriate for these childish games. 

beomgyu was eight years old when a title was bestowed upon him. he didn’t really know the weight of it then, only knew that he was playing marbles with his friends, when kai suddenly came over to him and yelled at his face.

“i’m tagging you as my soulmate!” 

it was a bizarre concept for a kid who hadn’t even discovered that you could have affective emotions towards someone else outside your family. all his life, it was just his dad, mom, and his brother. but now kai was putting a name for him. something that wasn’t _friends_ like the other kids present with them that day.

so he just had to ask. “what is that?”

“you don’t know? my cousin said that it’s something like super friends,” kai explained, a smug smile plastered on his lips because for once, he knew about something that beomgyu didn’t. “you have to treat your soulmate well and stay with them forever.”

“forever is a long time. like twenty years,” beomgyu frowned. 

“i would stay... forty years? with hyung.”

that somehow made beomgyu felt all warm and flustered because someone would actually want to be friends with him for that long. it sounded like what his mother meant when she said that someday he would find someone who he loved so dearly, and he would want to live with them for a long time. beomgyu always said that it’d be his mom and no one else, but now he felt something shifted his conviction.

 _someone_. 

the thought made him burn with a new kind of feeling, making him feel shy, like a little kid who’s about to hide behind his mom’s legs. to cope with it, he decided to just be himself.

“then you’d share your toys with your soulmate, right?” beomgyu got up, abandoning his small game with his classmates only to snatch the panda doll clutched in kai’s arm before breaking into a dash. 

kai yelled at him in his high pitched voice, trying to claw at his shirt, only for beomgyu to climb up the stairs for the monkey bar, dangling off the highest ledge with the poor panda doll held in the air. kai didn’t like the height from up there, so he could only stay under the bars with a sulky look in his face while trying to jump on his tip toes and reach the height, which was impossible for his tiny size back then. 

“i have forever to reach you!” he said sulkily, giving up and sitting on the ground with his arms crossed over his chest. “just you see, beomie hyung!”

beomgyu peered down from the height, feeling playful still, but also soft. this was their kind of love. the elementary schooler kind of love that was innocent and playful, yet filled with so much fondness. they were already planning a long time ahead of the little years they had spent on earth.

weirdly enough, he didn’t mind it. 

“i can’t wait forever, kai! come up here!”

beomgyu was ten years old when he saw kai cried for the first time, and it was because his parents threw away all his plushie collections, claiming that they were already too worn-out and he was too big to be playing with them. 

“that’s unfair, i’m older than you and i still have some!” 

“you don’t sleep with them,” kai said, rubbing irritated red nose. he got a point.

“okay then, if you think you’re growing too big for your other favourite things, you can let me keep them and you can still have them whenever we’re playing at my room.”

kai perked up at the offer. “nice idea, hyung! i should start doing that soon. we can’t help the plushies anymore, but at least i have a new way to cope when i miss something to hold.”

“huh, what is it?”

his curiosity was responded initially by kai’s playful smile as the younger told him to close his eyes. he did it, because he had a full trust on his best friend. but they were sitting on top of the jungle gym, and as much as beomgyu wanted to stay still when kai started rubbing his tummy, he was not strong enough to resist the ticklish sensation. 

with all the squirming he did, he ended up toppling backwards. a gasp escaped his mouth as he was sent down the length of the slide with a loud yell that gained the attention of other kids in the playground. his face beet red when he stayed sprawled on the bottom of the slide, staring up at kai who peeked at him from the top.

“are you okay?” he yelled. 

“yes!”

“move out of the way then!”

he barely had time to roll over before kai did the same thing, yelling at the top of his lungs while sliding down backwards, breaking into a fit of laughter when he ended up next to beomgyu because _my ass hurts!_ and _we’re too big for this slide!_.

they got scolded by an ahjumma for giving a bad example to the younger kids in the playground, and they did regret it when it happened. but as they ran away from the playground towards beomgyu’s house, hands intertwined in an innocent lock. a bright smile was plastered in each of their face. 

==

it was the beginning of the ‘gifts’, something that started off as a mission to hide kai’s favourite childhood things. a secret exchange that made it more fun for them, because it happened like this:

beomgyu was kicking a pile of golden leaves on the side of the playground when he heard tiny footsteps coming behind him, and then a hand slipped into the pocket of his coat. he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was, only taking the item from his pocket and snorted. 

“tamagotchi, really?” he questioned, but kai already made his run away from his, poking his tongue out at the elder before waving his hand good bye. 

or like this: 

“i don’t think they would throw away a rubik’s cube,” he mumbled when hueningkai left his pocket bulging again a few days after, only for it to turn out as a cube with disorganized colours all over it. 

“they would! or they might touch it,” kai frowned. “i have a goal to finish it by the end of the year without any help.”

“i have the tutorial video if you want to see…”

“no!” 

it would be kai’s excuse to stop by his house for at least ten minutes every day, making a progress of his magic cube throughout the last month of the year. the bright smile he had on kai’s face when he finished it made beomgyu giddy for the whole day.

eventually, kai ran out of tiny items to store at beomgyu’s place (he had a little box under his bed just to store them. their little secret.), but he _had_ to keep the tradition going. it was hard to let go of something when you’ve been doing it every other day. for kai, it must feel so natural to come to beomgyu holding something small in his hand.

a macaroon that he pushed into beomgyu’s lips when he opened his mouth to speak (“hey! i wafnt brofw gro—oh, this is nice?”), or something he found on the street when he walked home from school (“who threw away a perfectly working hot wheel?”), or a part of what his dad gave him after coming back from his business trip (“kai, the story book is in english! i can’t read it!”).

the last present for that year was a box dropped on top of beomgyu’s open palm. 

“merry christmas, hyung! thank you for being my friend,” kai announced happily. 

beomgyu was happy, but he couldn’t help the solemn look that took over his face, which didn’t go unnoticeable by the younger. “i didn’t get you anything… i just figured, since we never exchanged gifts for christmas…”

that earned him and pinch on his cheek from kai, who scooted a safe distance away.

“i give you presents not because i want something in return. i give them to you because they’re perfect for you!”

it was not a good reason, but beomgyu decided to just let him be, especially knowing how stubborn the kid could be. he also figured out that the little secret exchange between them had shaped up kai’s love language, and he always looked the happiest whenever he gave beomgyu something.

the only thing beomgyu wanted to give to the boy was happiness.

“merry christmas, kai-ya.”

==

when beomgyu was twelve, he didn’t really visit the playground anymore. big kids don’t do that. they were supposed to study all the time now, and his friend circles were mostly limited to his classmates.

except for kai.

kai dragged him towards the monkey bar, only to show off that he could curl his fingers around the highest bar without standing on his tiptoes anymore. both of them were growing taller steadily, though not in the way they wanted, especially seeing how beomgyu’s brother had gone through his growth spurt in high school and both of the boys could only watch jealously. 

“one day i’m going to grow taller than you, hyung,” kai said when they were about to leave the place. 

the sun was setting in its orange glory. it reminded beomgyu of their first meeting, when kai was a tiny little kid who hid behind the very same monkey bar. it’s not his fault that the thought made it funny for hi, making him snort. 

“i don’t think that day will ever come…”

“wanna bet?”

“i will tell your mom that you’re teaching me weird stuff.”

“hey!”

==

beomgyu was thirteen when kai adopted a new hobby.

it had something to do with doodling, so he drew a lot of tiny drawings all over his textbooks, random papers, and even his own skin. he had colourful pens, too. it was so amusing to see, seeing how the colours really fit the boy. 

they were sitting at the bench across beomgyu’s house. the sound of kids playing in the playground in their background. but neither of them was bothered about it. one busy practicing his guitar while the other was doodling on his science textbook while acting like he was studying for his exams. 

“hyung, can i draw something on you?” the request came out of the blue, so random that the next strum of strings came bearing down an awful note.

beomgyu was snapped out of his concentration, turning to look at the latter instead. “me? why, though?”

“i want to leave a mark on you, so you’ll have no choice but to remember that i exist.”

“we meet everyday.”

“and?”

“the ink will wash away when i shower.”

“your point?”

there was no way out of this, so beomgyu offered his hand, which kai accepted with a victorious smile. it was his fault for letting the younger win all the time, that he became this confident. but how could he refuse when kai looked at him like _that_?

kai drew smiley faces on his nails using his black pen, grinning when beomgyu gave him a puzzled look when he saw the creation.

“i didn’t use my drawing pens, so it will stay longer.”

that made beomgyu scoff. “i wash myself thoroughly, just you see. they won’t be here anymore tomorrow.”

they were still visible on his nails the next day, and kai rubbed that fact all over his face. but it was okay, because beomgyu wasn’t really trying to get rid of them even when he contemplated it during shower. 

it was also okay that he got five slaps of wooden ruler across his palm by his teacher for every smiley face drawn on his nails. he figured that they were worth the sting.

==

beomgyu was fifteen when he realized that he had a crush on his best friend. 

it was a hot and sticky summer, marked by the noises of crickets from behind bushes and bugs that kai had to slap away whenever they flew too close to beomgyu.

it was a tradition that every summer, beomgyu and his family went to the beach for holidays, but his father was coming down with flu, so he had to swallow his disappointment. he told himself that he was too big for the tradition anyway. his brother wasn’t even coming back because of the summer classes he was taking in uni, so it was pointless.

but kai could feel it in the air the night they met at the playground.

the playground had become their secret meeting place at night instead, as it was deserted only when the sun had gone down. 

one look at beomgyu’s face, and he turned back around to run. “wait for me!”

it took ten minutes for him to come back, hugging a pile of pretty shells. one for each year beomgyu went on a holiday and came back with one to give to kai. he didn’t think the boy would keep them, but he did, and not he was spreading it over the box full of sand.

“let’s go to the beach, hyung.”

it was a ridiculous idea, especially when he was told to take off his sandals and close his eyes. but just like when he was ten years old, sitting on top of the gym jungle, he still trusted his best friend with his life. so he closed his eyes, and let kai guided him to walk until his bare feet touched the sand. 

the texture obviously didn’t match the one he walked on every summer on the family beach trip, but it was just perfect. the humidity, the warmth under his shirt from the summer air, the hands holding his as his feet touched the sand and the edges of the shells, careful not to shatter them. 

hueningkai brought him the beach. 

“you can go next year, hyung. maybe i can join, too. it will be the two of us.”

beomgyu opened his eyes, and looking at kai’s smile, then at his eyes that held the promise, he felt an ache squeezing his heart. it was the first time he felt a pain that don’t put him in discomfort, and he knew that he had been feeling this way for a long time. particularly, when it came to kai. 

but it was not the moment he fell in love. it just the moment he put a name into the feelings. because it’s always been there, an inseparable part of him. the part that was in love with your best friend even before he was aware of what love felt like, or figured out his sexuality. 

it just felt right, that it had to be kai he trusted his heart to. 

after all, you’d never have another chance to fall in love the way you did with your bare feet digging into a playground’s dirty sand and your best friend’s hands in yours.

==

beomgyu was sixteen when he had his heart broken for the first time.

it came without warning. but then again, nothing could foresee the moment you lost a love. 

the last time they met at the playground, beomgyu was crawling amidst the bushes, eyebrows drawn together and his nose red from the cold air. he recognized kai’s footsteps on the lightly piling snow when he came over, his face filled with concern when beomgyu looked up. 

“you’re crying,” not a question. a statement. 

“i’m not.”

“what happened?”

beomgyu stayed quiet for a moment before turning off the flashlight from his phone and got up. “got a fight over the phone with my brother since he can’t come home again this holiday. and the next,” he said with a scoff. 

“oh.”

“then i threw away the bracelet he got for me. it’s stupid since it’s pretty expensive and he bought it for me with the first paycheck he got from part time. i’m so stupid.”

kai shook his head, cupping beomgyu’s cheeks with his gloved hands. for a second, beomgyu wasn’t sure if the warmth he felt was from his blood surging up to his face or from the soft fabric of the gloves. 

“you’re not stupid. and it will be okay since we will find it.”

“you think we will find it?”

“yep. when did i ever fail you?”

that second, as beomgyu looks into kai’s eyes, cheeks warm and fingers frozen, he remembered that day kai claimed him at his soulmate. that was also the day beomgyu decided to trust him, and it went on to this day. 

kai would never fail him. even if they didn’t find the bracelet in the end, and since it was already getting so late in the night, beomgyu called it a day, holding kai back for a cup of hot chocolate before he went home. it was a normal night, filled with laughters and eager stories told between the two. 

it was not the way to prepare him for an unsaid good bye. 

  
  


==

falling in love with hueningkai didn’t come with fireworks in the background or butterflies in his stomach. it had a similar sensation of learning how you breathe – inhale, oxygen in the lungs, exhale. fireworks come and go, but breathing is something your body has accustomed to do even before you figured out the science behind it.

that’s the way beomgyu loved kai

it felt like breathing.

that also explains why it was so painful for him to breathe when kai stopped showing up.

==

it was a week (“maybe they’re going away for holiday!”), and then it turned into a month. (“beomgyu, did kai say anything about moving?”), then as the months passed by without any news, beomgyu started to get used to live his life with a hollow space in his chest. 

it’s the place where kai used to fill, where he curled up nicely and made himself at home in his heart, providing warmth and comfort.

one day, you think you had forever, and the next day, you found out that you’ve run out of _forever_. 

the waiting turned from hopeful into desperation, and eventually settled into something more dangerous where he started to question his head. were those memories he made with kai actually happened, or was that just something manifested in his head when he was a kid and brought up with him along with his growth into adolescent? 

what if he fell in love with his childhood’s imaginary friend? and now that he had gotten too big for one, he discarded huening kai completely. the thought brought fear into him, even more so when he realized that kai never interacted with any of his friends or brought beomgyu to visit his house. 

the only thing that reassured him was his mom’s intact memory of the boy, and the bunny plushie sitting on top of his desk.

“you’ve known him for more than half your life, and you’re questioning that he’s real only now?” she laughed when beomgyu voiced his concern. 

“it just seems pointless that someone came into your life for a long time, made memories, and then left just like _that_ ,” he said, pouting as he destroyed the pancake on his plate with his fork. “there’s no way he can’t be real.”

“but you love him.”

beomgyu choked. “mom?!“

his mom smiled.

“everyone who comes and leaves a mark in your life teach you something. for kai, it just happened to be love, no matter what kind of love it is.”

“isn’t that just mean? if, hypothetically, i’m in love with him and he’s leaving me?” he’s still pressing stubbornly. “since i lost him anyway, there’s no point in building that love.”

“you may lose him, but a lost love is still love. do you think you’d be happier without ever developing that feeling for him?”

beomgyu didn’t answer her, but he knew deep down that the answer was _no._ he carried this little ball of warmth inside his chest for years, and even though the warmth had turned into fire that was burning him from the inside and threatening to break him into ashes, he never regretted his feelings for kai. 

he just wished that this was not the last present kai would ever gift to him.

==

beomgyu was seventeen when the letter came on his birthday, completed with a dried rose inside the envelope. there was a familiar messy handwriting scribbled over the brown envelope. a handwriting which he could recognize from any angle. 

by this time, he had gotten used to the pain from the fire, already extinguished it that it turned into a dull ache, almost a numbed feeling. 

“gyu, ready to go?” his brother poked his head from the doorframe. 

he threw the envelope into their ‘secret box’ under his bed along with the other small presents and never looked back when he shouldered his backpack, leaving his childhood bedroom and all the memories he ever made in there behind the closed door. 

it was time to move on. 

==

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> someday i will write the second part of this fic but today is not the day 
> 
> happy birthday b ♡
> 
> [ twt ](http://twitter.com/soogyulvr)


End file.
